Joel Embiid annihilated the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday. He scored 51 points on 17-for-25 shooting in a 76ers win, imposing his will against the best defensive team in the NBA. Rudy Gobert, the frontrunner for Defensive Player of the Year, acknowledged as much after his team's 127-113 loss.
"He had an amazing night," Gobert told reporters. "He was obviously -- I mean, he's MVP for a reason. He's a very, very tough matchup, a tough player to guard."
Gobert had more to say, though, about the difficulty of defending Embiid. And he didn't just continue with the compliments.
The rest of the quote: "But it makes it even harder for me when the officials call some fouls like they called the first two fouls. And that puts me in foul trouble and then it's even harder to guard him," Gobert said. "So I wish they would … call the game more fairly, so I can really at least try to be me and try to make him work even harder."
Gobert, who was limited to 24 minutes after picking up two fouls in the first three-and-a-half minutes and a third about four minutes before halftime, then noted that Embiid "made a lot of tough shots tonight" and the Sixers deserved credit for being "very efficient." But when a reporter followed up about Minnesota coach Chris Finch saying the team needed to play with more physicality, Gobert went at the refs even harder.
"Of course [the foul calls affected the level of physicality]," Gobert said. "Talk about physicality, I get elbowed in the face, I get hit in the head, they never review that. And then on one end, like, I can't touch nobody, you know? And the last three games on the road: New Orleans, Dallas and tonight -- Miami was actually OK -- but I get two quick fouls right away. And I always try to give them benefit of the doubt and I look back at the film and everything. But, you know, I've been in this thing a long time and it doesn't seem fair, it doesn't seem natural.
"Especially with the things I was able to accomplish in my career, me coming in the game and getting two quick fouls like that, with everything that they do to me on the other hand, it's weird. It's really weird. And there's some things that, I guess, we'll never know, we'll never understand, but -- and I don't want to focus on that, I don't want to put my attention on that -- but it's really affecting our team when I have to sit two minutes, three minutes into the game, and then coming back with two fouls and try to be me, but it's hard to be you when you've got three guys waiting to take you out of the game as soon as they can."
Gobert's frustration about the lack of a video review when he got elbowed by Embiid is understandable. He took a nasty hit:
And reasonable people may disagree about whether or not Gobert deserved the fouls he picked up. Here are all four of them:
More important than the validity of his complaints about Wednesday's calls, though, is the fact that he aired more general grievances. Referencing previous games while saying that the calls didn't seem "natural" and the referees were "waiting to" call fouls on him could raise alarm bells at the league office, particularly given Gobert's recent history. Last season, after a late-March loss against the Phoenix Suns, he directly accused officials of "trying to help" the Suns (and the Golden State Warriors and, strangely, the Sacramento Kings) at the expense of less established teams in less-glamorous markets. For that he earned a $25,000 fine.
Gobert's comments on Wednesday weren't quite as explosive. But they could be expensive.
